Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

NJ Christians Try to Burn Down FFRF Billboard

Adding to the long history of vandalism and violence that so often greets the expression of non-Christian sentiment in this country, residents of Pitman, New Jersey have tried to burn down a billboard put up by the FFRF that says “Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia.”

A South Jersey billboard proclaiming “Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia” was torched Tuesday night by two unidentified men who fled in a pickup truck after only charring the sign’s steel support beams.

The billboard, erected as a cheeky counterpoint to a “Keep Christ in Christmas” banner in downtown Pitman, refers to the ancient pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice, held in mid-December to honor the Roman god, Saturn.

The incendiary incident is only the latest to be sparked by the billboard, which was paid for by a national group of atheists. According to town officials, many Pitman residents lost their holiday cheer when they woke up Friday morning to see the message plastered at the intersection of two heavily trafficked roads.

Several protesters descended on the billboard over the weekend. A man dressed in a full red Santa suit stood sentry in the cold for hours, holding a placard that referenced “Obamass.” On Sunday, a family of four attempted to shroud the sign with picture of Jesus before they were shooed away by police…

An off-duty police officer witnessed the latest assault on the sign Tuesday about 11:45 p.m., said Chief Robert Zimmerman. Two white men pulled up in a silver and blue Ford 150 pickup truck with a ladder rack. They poured gas around the supports, set it ablaze and quickly fled.

“They were not successful,” Zimmerman said. “The posts are steel and didn’t ignite at all.”

Geniuses tried to burn down a steel beam. That’s a Darwin award just waiting to happen.

The claim that these men were Christians is unsupported by the report.

The claim by Corwyn that these vandals were not Christians is unsupported by reality and history.

Xianity has historically been an incredibly violent religion and that continues today. Xian terrorism is a serious problem in the USA and has been for decades. Many of us, including myself, routinetly get death threats from xians.

Modus – surely it’s designed to distract the rubes from OBAMACARE DETHPANELS and that BEN GHAZI fellow!
Sheesh! Get it right.
:) Dingo
———–
Not to mention ULTRA-SECRET, Wiley Coyote, plans to NUKE the US using DOUBLE-DEDLY imaginary nuclear weapons…..
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Sorry to use the comments for this, but you guys may want to do something about the ads served on the Freethoughtblogs network.

Recently I’ve been getting these annoying pop-ups that open an external webpage when dismissed, and today while browsing on my phone an ad wanted to force the download of an android app (fortunately my browser stopped it).

While I’m not a subscriber, I browse with no ad blockers so that I’m not interfering with your revenue stream. But if these ads keep showing up I may have to change this for the sake of security.

Odds are that the vandals are xian. However, there’s a reasonable possibility that it’s just vandals who are looking to cause destruction and have picked a target that won’t garner much concern from a significant percentage of the population. (The motivation being destructive behavior as opposed to religious indignation). The headline indicates that it’s definitive that the vandals were motivated by xian outrage and Corwyn’s observation is accurate. I assume a xian billboard that was vandalized wouldn’t garner the opposite headline here, would it? We would also wonder why Fox would accuse atheists of vandalizing a xian billboard with the same information in this story.

“The claim by Corwyn that these vandals were not Christians is unsupported by reality and history.”

Try some reading comprehension, please.

Try some honesty. If you are a xian, maybe you borrow some from atheists or slugs or something.

Xians are routinely violent and attacks against atheist signs and displays are common. Xian terrorism has been a problem in the USA for decades. And I’ve lost track of how many death threats I’ve gotten from xians. It’s one of favorite hobbies. On a good day PZ Myers has gotten up to 100. In one day.

Old post of biologists attacked by creationists. It’s out of date because there are more victims but you get the idea.

Their main targets these days are mosques and family planning clinics. When they are not hating and persecuting gays, women, and the poor.

And oh yeah, Watch out for xian death cultists!!! You think it won’t happen to you. Until it does.

FWIW, fundie xians can and occasionally are violent. This vandalism in Florida is just more xian terrorism.

Below is an old list of their other victims. It is long and getting longer all the time.

The real story is the persecution of scientists by Fundie Xian Death cultists, who have fired, harassed, beaten up, and killed evolutionary biologists and their supporters whenever they can.http://www. sunclipse .org/?p=626 [link goes to Blake Stacey’s blog which has a must read essay with documentation of the cases below.]

Posting the list of who is really being beaten up, threatened, fired, attempted to be fired, and killed. Not surprisingly, it is scientists and science supporters by Death Cultists.

If anyone has more info add it. Also feel free to borrow or steal the list.

I thought I’d post all the firings of professors and state officials for teaching or accepting evolution.

How about someone ask the police chief why the off duty officer didn’t take down the license plate number of that pick-up truck the perps fled in. Or if said officer actually *knows* who they were….

Good question.

My guess is the police were in on it. Or at least that the witnessing officer was. Maybe he was the watch guy.

I don’t know how many atheist billboards and Holiday displays have been vandalized. No one is keeping track. But it seems like most of them get hit.

Which prompts this disturbing though. How come they never arrest anyone for these crimes? We’ve all seen it in the past. If you are a woman, nonwhite, gay, nonxian, or some other minority, the cops just never seem too interested in what happened to you , why, or who did it.
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Nothing corwyn wrote was incorrect, as had3 pointed out in comment 22, so there was no need for you to accuse corwyn of not being honest in comment 23. He didn’t say that the vandals aren’t Christian, he just pointed out that there’s no supporting evidence for the claim that they are. It’s an assumption, and it may be a reasonable assumption, but it shouldn’t be taken as fact.

raven“Atheist billboards and displays get vandalized quite often.”
To be fair, it wouldn’t happen if you Athiests stopped putting them up.

Ichthyic“it’s why I was forced into using noscript and adblock. ad feeds these days pay litle attention to maliciously scripted ads until there is a huge ruckus.”
Richard Vernon: “What was that ruckus?”
Andrew Clark: “Uh, what ruckus?”
Richard Vernon: “I was just in my office and I heard a ruckus.”
Brian Johnson: “Could you describe the ruckus, sir?”

I think people are maligning the reporting police officer. I can also easily imagine scenarios where he could not get the license plate starting with being too far away and the culprits fled before he got close to the scene (if he approached); it was also near midnight so visibility would have been bad. Note the officer was off-duty and not from Pitman and probably on foot possibly after some eating and drinking (checking on google maps the intersection where the billboard is has a restaurant on one corner). If he knew the culprits or supported them he would have reported nothing.

He didn’t say that the vandals aren’t Christian, he just pointed out that there’s no supporting evidence for the claim that they are.

But there is.

1. Motive, means, and opportunity. I posted a lot of it. Once again, xians have a long history of vandalizing atheist billboards and Holiday displays. The religion has been and is violent. A lot of xians hate athests. A lot of xians just hate period.

2. There is no direct evidence since the police stood there watching and somehow can’t identify them.

3. But there is no evidence that the perpetrators weren’t UFO aliens, demons, Fairies, Trolls, Saturn haters, or Elves. But really, how likely is that?

The standard of proof isn’t 100% certainty in this case. But the preponderance of evidence is very likely. Who else hates atheists, lives in fear and hate, and has a history of vandalism and violence?

I assume a xian billboard that was vandalized wouldn’t garner the opposite headline here, would it?

AV: You would be wrong.

Correct.

Every xian web site would have screaming headlines for months. Fox News would run it for days. It would be on every wingnut xian TV and radio show. Look what they did when A&E suspended a southern Jackass for making bigoted statements about gays and blacks.

Xians love their persecution stories. Since it is all but unknown, they usually just make something up. According to the xians in New Jersey, that billboard of Saturn is….persecution and they have to ….fight back. Or something.

PS Xian billboards outnumber atheist billboards by orders of magnitude. For any xians reading, an order of magnitude is a power of ten.

I’ve never heard of any of them getting vandalized except one of Harold Camping’s. Which was vandalized by…other xians. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen but it doesn’t seem common.

I assume a xian billboard that was vandalized wouldn’t garner the opposite headline here, would it?

FTB has zero tolerance for people acting…like xians. Example from two days ago.

Please don’t do this

Atheism, Ethics by PZ Myers December 20, 2013

Ken Ham is all smug and indignant over something an atheist wrote about him. And this really hurts to say, but I think Ken Ham has a case. Here’s the bit of “satire” written about a certain despicable creationist.

2. We are better than the fundie xians. Not all of us, it’s just the average or median. Atheism isn’t a panacea, you can still be a dysfunctional monster. It is just less common.

So, IMO. DON’T DO IT!!! No vandalism, no terrorism, no death threats, no threats of violence. It doesn’t help to act like a fundie xian, it hurts us a lot. The lies, hate, hypocrisy, and violence of xians is one of our main advantages!!!

Alverant @ 30 & Raven: I assume a xian vandalized billboard would garner that reaction at Fox News, whether or not they knew the reason or the culprit. My objection (& I thought Corwyn’s point) was the headline stated the vandalism as a fact as being done by xians for religious reasons, when that fact was not established in the details. A simple editing of the headline to read “atheist billboard vandalized by suspected NJ xians” is a more accurate statement without subjecting this blog to the eating of crow if it turns out that the vandals were merely opportunistic drunken idiots picking a target based upon something other than religious intolerance. Is it likely to have been motivated by religious intolerance, yes. Is that so overwhelmingly probable that a slight editing of the headline isn’t warranted, I would think not.

Also, on PZ’s blog, the admonition was because the offending party held himself out as an atheist, not because a threat was made against Ham by an unknown person with possible motives contrary to Ham but not in alignment with the atheist community at large. I’m unaware of any critique of a xian billboard’s vandalism by unknown parties on FTB, unless presumably the vandals left an atheist message behind.

I’m unaware of any critique of a xian billboard’s vandalism by unknown parties on FTB, unless presumably the vandals left an atheist message behind.

Still making the same tired, worn out, and dumb excuses I see.

1. Xians like had3 never miss a chance to demonstrate the complete ethical and intellectual bankruptcy of their religion.

2. We see these excuses every time xian terrorists strike or they kill their kids with faith healing and torture murder. Or vandalize billboards or threaten to kill us.
It’s a false flag operation.
Atheists do it too.
You can’t prove it was a xian. and the usual one.

They weren’t Real Xians..

3. And that is why US xianity is dying. According to the latest Harris poll, down 22 million people in the last decade.

4. And had3 and corwyn, just keep doing what you’re doing. That ugliness is a great tailwind for atheists and we appreciate your help.

You don’t have any choice in this either. Xians can’t stop themselves from being ugly and vicious. It’s simply impossible for them.

I’m unaware of any critique of a xian billboard’s vandalism by unknown parties on FTB, unless presumably the vandals left an atheist message behind.

This is gibberish.

1. I’m unaware of any xian billboard vandalized by atheists. I could pull up a dozen atheist billboards vandalized by what is likely to be xians from Google in a few minutes.

2. If they did, we would condemn it. It’s acting like a fundie xian death cultist. That is an insult to us. We are better than that or should be anyway. As already posted twice, PZ Myers condemned some idiot claiming to be an atheist behaving badly two days ago on FTB’s. This BTW is not unusual. Not all atheists are shining examples of humanity. We don’t defend them, we criticize them.

I”m done here. Feeding fundie trolls isn’t that interesting although giving them a chance to show what they are is worth a little. Anyone else can jump in.

Raven @ 49: please actually read what I wrote as opposed to what you want to believe that I wrote.

1) The headline makes a definitive factual statement that is not supported by the facts in the article, much as you jump to the conclusion that I am xian (I am an atheist, fwiw). I agree it is most likely xians motivated by religious belief; however, I would find the equivalent headline involving a xian billboard with only these facts on Fox to be inartfully written. Let me try and be clearer, if Fox News had a headline that said “atheists vandalize xian billboard” based upon unknown culprits attempting to set fire to it; would you believe that headline to be accurate? If your answer is yes, then we have no further discussion and our opinions differ on headline writing techniques.

2 & 3) I’ve made no claim that the culprits aren’t xian, I assume they are xian and stated this in every post. But the headline is a factual claim and I like factual claims to have a higher degree of certainty than the facts provided in the supporting article. (See my Fox new analogy above).

4) why resort to a mean spirited statement? What have I written that was mean spirited? I, and Corwyn, disagree with the choice of a factual claim in a headline and state why I disagree and provide an alternative explanation. Not only that, I’ve consistently stated that I believe the vandals to be xian and to be motivated by religious intolerance, but that is insufficient for you. I am atheist, proudly so, and that is why I cringed when I read the article and saw the disconnect between it and the headline. Perhaps my atheism isn’t as atheismy as yours, but it doesn’t warrant your response #4.

These billboards are hate speech. Is that chillingly racist billboard “Slaves obey your masters” still up complete with dehumanizing and brutally graphic visual imagery? I mean, just passing by at normal speed, it could easily been mistaken for a message to black Christians courtesy of the KKK.
Considering the nature of the alleged crime based on a single eye witness’ testimony, sounds like something juveniles might attempt. Or Feminists. We have actual video footage of them ripping down posters with box cutters and openly bragging about it right here on FTB!
According to the 2010 Census, Newark is 52.3% black,, 34% Latino, and 26% white with a median age of 32. 25% are below the poverty line. This is the population atheists target with demeaning and dehumanizing messages. When you can’t afford to give your children a decent Christmas, much less decorate, the reminder to keep Christ in Christmas, provides these people with some joy. That there is more to Christmas than material goods. Then you slap them down with ridicule courtesy of the educated, affluent, white ivory tower elites. Your high-priced legal team removed public Nativity Scenes and even many Christmas trees. It’s not just religion atheists have eliminated, it’s their culture directly you’re belittling.
Some inner city teens vandalized your condescending message. Do you really think some creationists drove to a New Jersey ghetto to try to burn it down? I mean, you don’t believe Jesus existed. But you’ve solved this crime on no physical evidence. You all fail at profiling criminals and take glee at mocking the disadvantaged minorities for their cultural practice. Good job!

No. It could have been some irreligious young men who identify with conservative Christianity from a political aspect alone, similar to the older legions of white conservative irreligious males who follow Rush Limbaugh, Investors Business Daily, or comment at the Wall Street Journal. These young people are often seen in our red-state area driving around with a confederate flag, in spite of my living in northern Michigan. They’re into guns, sometimes meth, some are into B&E’s, and many vandalize property (they especially like to, “blow shit up”). They’re not religious though they strongly identify with Sarah Palin and of course, “Uncle” Ted Nugent (who is from MI and frequents our area to hunt).

An illustrative analog: As a teen I used to observe gay teens being bullied. These bullies were not religious, instead our Christian culture certainly enabled and arguably promoted such bullying, which these bullies were happy to exploit.

That was A fine rant by spectator @57 but the billboard in question was in Pitman, NJ not Newark. Which according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitman,_New_Jersey
Is 96% white with a median household income of ~67,000/year, and 6.7% of the population below the poverty line. Not exactly the poor inner city black population you claim they were targeting.